Light Show 7 Journal Entry #4: Ironing out details

I’m going to start titling the update posts on Light Show 7 as part of a numbered journal. If you go back, you will see that this is the fourth post about the progress on the new light show so we’re moving on from there.

Anyways, I’ve gotten some more brainstorming done when it comes to the backdrop. Each tower will have a pair of RGB LEDs because one RGB LED at the base is not bright enough to light up the length of the tower. In the last post, I was wondering if I should put something to top off each tower but I got my answer once I decided to add another LED to the top of each tower.

I kind of want to call them streetlights now… These little boxes fit the width of the tower but extend out so that the LEDs are positioned an inch away from the tower. The one assembled in this picture was the prototype.I wanted to focus on the build quality in this project so I outlined the main objectives of having clean surfaces and doing soldered connections pretty much everywhere. After assembling the LED in the photo above, I decided to ditch soldering and go back to using jumper wires and breadboards. It’s just so much easier and faster. I may have to pick up some more jumper wires but I have a good bunch to get going.Once I was satisfied with the details, I made up six more boxes.I used hot glue to fold them into this shape. The camera angle is going to be straight at the stage (unlike some previous shows where the camera is above) so I don’t plan on putting a cover on them.

The next step is to figure out how I want to put in the LEDs at the base of the towers. After that, I need to build a base to raise up the backdrop so that the bottom of the towers is at the lip of the fountain basin. Once this is all complete, the backdrop will be complete and I can move onto the fountains (and other secret, but somewhat minor, elements).